Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Happy New Year!

1/1/2022

I'm so excited to ring in the new year with you! Welcome to 2022 and all the possibilities it holds!

I wanted to share with readers of Thealogical Lady that today is also special to me because it marks the launch of my Patreon - www.patreon.com/mkateallen. A decade after starting this blog, I'm taking a dive into the belief that full-time writing deserves me, and I deserve it. I invite you to take a look and maybe share the link with a friend or two. I'm so grateful for the time you've given to reading my words. You give me courage, and that is the greatest gift I could ask for. Thank you. ♥

What wild dreams are you choosing to chase this year?

Memory Stands Still (2nd edition)

12/24/2021

The second edition of my first novel, Memory Stands Still, is now available from Thea Press! It includes an afterword (written by moi!) as well as discussion questions. It's available wherever books are sold.

If you're interested in purchasing an autographed copy, I invite you to contact me!

Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival

12/8/2021

I'm beyond excited to announce that I've been accepted as one of forty featured writers at the 2022 Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival!

From their website: "This year's festival is scheduled for Saturday, March 5, 2022, at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts. Whether you are an avid or casual reader, aspiring writer or published author, you will find something entertaining and intriguing at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival. This one-day FREE* festival showcases 40 best-selling mystery, suspense, thriller, horror, paranormal, historical, romance, and women's fiction authors."

I'm excited to fly cross-country to meet and greet my readers (and to meet my own favorite author, Juliet Blackwell, who's headlining the event). Four of my books will be available that day for purchase and signing: Memory Stands Still (2nd ed.), Playing Gauche, Crystal Winters and the Haunted Mansion, and Michelle Lobos and the Labyrinth.

I invite you to mark your calendar! I look forward to seeing you there!

Flow

12/7/2021

Photo by M. Kate Allen

If you've ever signed up for National Novel Writing Month, you know the pain. The horror. The despair.

The struggle to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days is real.

Last month, I embraced the struggle again. I've signed up many times before, and I've won NaNoWriMo before, but that win always included words about the novel I was working on, not just words of the novel. Every time I've signed up, I've put my determination right out in front and decided that if a winning outcome couldn't be achieved the way the rules of the challenge indicated, I would make a winning outcome fit what I could do.

And hey, you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you're going for. Unflagging determination is awesome and deserves loads of credit.

This blog post isn't about strategies for winning outrageous challenges, though.

This blog post is about how I approached this year's NaNoWriMo challenge in a different way. Rather than making winning (by writing 50,000 words) my priority, I made inviting the flow of writing (no matter what words came or didn't come) my priority. This invitation aligned with the NaNowWriMo challenge, but it did not guarantee that I would win it.

Remember in the film Center Stage when Eva Rodriguez (played by Zoe Saldana) is in the practice studio by herself at night, and her teacher, Juliette Simone (played by Donna Murphy), shows up? Eva is trying to perfect her twirl. Her fierce pride has been dubbed a bad attitude by the dance school's faculty, which has her dancing in the chorus rather than dancing center stage for the end-of-year show, even though she's got some of the best technique in her cohort. When Juliette sees Eva struggling to perfect her turn, she advises her to let go of her center.

Eva could dismiss her teacher, whom she regards as arrogant and bossy. (If Juliette had made the suggestion in her front Eva's classmates, that's likely what Eva would have done.) In this scene, when it's just Eva, Juliette, and the dance floor, Eva tries what Juliette suggests. She lets go of her center for the next turn, and Juliette, an exacting and practiced critic, calls her turn beautiful.

I would argue that the beauty Juliette sees in Eva's turn isn't primarily about her technique, but about her willingness to let go of the one thing that's holding her back: her ego. (Interestingly, releasing ego is what causes the star of the end-of-year show to step down at the last minute, making way for Eva, her under-study, to take center stage.)

This movie replayed in my head over and over last month, especially during the first week of November. The urging to invite flow rather than force an outcome had come from an oracle card I drew while on retreat in late October, and the message hit me like a sack of bricks. I am amazing at bringing about outcomes using all manner of creative means. But inviting flow isn't the same as inviting a particular outcome. To invite flow is to risk the possibility that the outcome will be nothing like what I originally hoped for.

The thing is, just because you've posed an invitation doesn't mean that the one you've invited is obligated to accept. The one you invite may have other ideas. The one you invite may flat-out say no.

I invited flow every single day of the NaNoWriMo challenge last month. As I wrote, the novel I was working on went in directions I would never have chosen if I weren't so focused on continuing to invite flow. The words that tip-tapped out of my fingers sometimes seemed rather not-promising, trite, or strange. This was disorienting for me. I kept inviting them.

As I invited, they flowed and flowed, forming a pool of 55,000 original words, and a day or two after November was over, I finished the first draft of that book manuscript. The win was achieved, and it was an extraordinary win by any estimation.

It wasn't winning by the rules that felt most extraordinary, though. It was discovering that inviting flow gave me access to apparently limitless creativity within myself. I discovered that my flow is like a waterfall, steady, powerful, and potentially overwhelming. Further, I discovered that my flow wants my invitation every single time (so far)--and it also wants a say in how things go.

Since I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge, I've taken a curious look at the rest of my life, looking for other ways I attempt to force outcomes rather than inviting flow. Forcing outcomes is, as I said, something I'm very good at, but forced outcomes often yield toxic feelings and behaviors. When I flow, I not only release attachment to the way things might turn out, but I release my usual stressors right along with them.

While inviting flow didn't take me in every direction my vision dictated, what it did do was allow me to expand my vision, without asking my intellect for permission first. By inviting flow, my creative dam burst.

How do you invite creative flow?

Michelle Lobos and the Labyrinth

10/25/2021

The second book in my Sticky Ones kid series, Michelle Lobos and the Labyrinth, is available for pre-order! I invite you to order a copy from your favorite local bookseller for a youngster in your life.

Who is your favorite local bookseller? I invite you to leave their information in the comments with a few words about what sets them apart.

Seeing the Dark

10/16/2021

"Dark Mirror" by Andrea Dobbins

There's a woman I know who sees with better sight than most.

Today I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She wrote of teaching a group of ecology students by taking them deep into the woods for several days, utilizing the gifts of the earth for their food, shelter, and other essential needs. They learned the wonders of cattails and the treasures of roots hidden in rich black soil just beneath the forest floor. They learned not only the names and properties of what they studied, but relationship with and respect for what they encountered.

This woman I know, the one with marvelous sight, has a great deal of interest in what goes on in front of, around, and within her. What she perceives on the surface is only the beginning. She looks beyond the obvious and draws connections, lacing and interweaving a multitude of details not unlike those found in Robin Wall Kimmerer's exploration of what lies beneath the forest floor. As she brings more and more to the light, she seeks more and more of what remains unseen. The darkness is magic and she craves it.

She is a midwife of stories. She seeks to know the unknown, to invite into being the unborn. She also knows from experience that she simply won't grasp the fullness of what's hidden until what is hidden is ready to meet her. This is a neverending process--there is always more to behold.

This woman dives deep into shadow when others would hesitate even to dip a toe in it. I have cultivated a practice of embracing the unknown because of her.

When I am writing a story these days, I consider at length what to reveal and conceal. More and more, I choose to conceal much and to draw out the process of revelation. That process constitutes the story's sweetness. The hidden is both possibility and potential. What is concealed is the advent of our encounter with the dark--the stuff of life's adventure and authenticity.

Spiritual Practice: I invite you to pull out a hand-mirror, sit in a darkened room, light a candle, and hide the candle's flame with the mirror's face. Feel your connectedness to the earth. Soften your eyes. Invite your darkness to reveal itself to you. What do you see? What is the shape of your darkness? Are you open to naming it, to integrating into the known details of your claimed identity? Breathe deeply and draw your attention to the earth's embrace as you allow yourself to see more and more. When you are ready, thank the darkness and the earth. Journal about your discoveries.

2020

1/1/2020

Welcome to the Roaring, Soaring Twenties!

As I look back on the last decade, I see many firsts, and many occasions in which I've sought to prove that I could do or achieve or be something. I have proven a very great deal, and I am grateful to be able to look back and see all that I have accomplished.

That being said, as I look forward into this next decade, I seek to shed the need for proof and to walk instead by faith: faith that joy is a signal of doing the right thing, rather than a sign of mere selfishness. Through joy, so much becomes possible. I choose to let go of the suspicion of joy I learned in myriad ways growing up. I choose to let joy be a compass. I choose to trust joy, and also to let go of unnecessary frustration and rumination. I choose to practice detachment for the sake of cultivating joy-rooted gratitude. I choose to let joy be my wayfood and the song of my heart.

I am delighted to begin this journey of joyous discernment, and to let my joy radiate in every corner of my life.

To joy!

Riparian Preserve, Gilbert, Arizona. New Year's Day, 2020. Photo by M. Kate Allen

Thean Psalter

12/14/2018

It's gotten a bit dusty around here, so allow me to fling open the shutters and warm the blog with a happy announcement: Thean Psalter, the fruit of many years of devoted prayer and a yearning desire for faith that rings with honesty and joy, has just been published by Thea Press. The newly published version includes many updates to the proto-Psalter I had made available in 2016. I invite you to take a taste for yourself with a psalm that speaks to the journey that brought this prayerbook to fruition:

Psalm 40

I waited for you, O Thea;
suddenly I felt you bend close to me, listening.

You lifted me out of my pit, out of the mire and clay;
   you set me upon a high cliff
   and made my movements become sure once more.

A new song left my mouth then,
   a song of unfettered joy.

Oh, that I might tell of your wisdom’s way!
   but it is beyond my power to describe,
   for it is different for each creature, every one of us.

As for me, I have learned that it is enough to say,
   “Behold, I come.”

In your book it is written concerning me:
   ‘I love to do your will, O Thea;
   your wisdom is deep in my heart.’”

Psalm 1

4/22/2018

Psalm 1 of the Thean Psalter

Happy are they whose delight is in the wisdom of Thea,
   who meditate on her wisdom day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,
   bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.

For Thea embraces all who seek her,
   and touches them with her love.

Greeting the New Year

1/1/2018

This year brings with it changes: some eagerly welcomed, and some simply needed.

There will be several changes for me as I continue along this path of life.

1) Beginning this month, I will no longer be holding Thean Evening Prayer outside my home. This is a loss, as I have loved and learned a great deal from this monthly sacred circle of women. It is a gain of time and energy, both of which are increasingly precious to me. I invite those who have gathered with me for Thean Evening Prayer and any others who wish to develop their own regular, rhythmic prayer practice to pray with the Thean Psalter. This Psalter is written in a feminine voice with feminine pronouns and names for Thea in a feminist thealogical worldview, and is an enriching supplement to other faith traditions as well as a strong, illuminating, standalone form of prayer.

2) The Thea House Church liturgies, which have previously been private gatherings, will be open to all pilgrims with open hearts beginning this March. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

3) I have found in the last year that I have failed to make adequate room in my life for two of my great joys: walking and writing. I resolve to set aside less vital pursuits to make room for these. To that end, I look forward this year to participating in my third half-marathon and finishing my second novel.

4) I imagine that each of us seeks to be more loving and less resentful. I cling sometimes to resentments and anger when I feel wronged or observe someone else being wronged, but I seek to keep those feelings close only long enough to learn from them and let them go in peace. The longer I journey along this road of mine, the more aware I become that my time is limited, and my desire to love abundantly and beautifully competes with the time I give over to festering anger. I seek to choose love and beauty, and to allow anger to grow into both of those rather than falling stagnant.

May 2018 be rich with joy, love, and hope for all Creation. ♥

Hand to Hand, Mother to Daughter: Part 3 (Guest Post)

11/13/2017

Keeley Bruner

Keeley Bruner is the mother of two daughters and a devoted, progressive member of the Disciples of Christ Church. In this three-part series, she writes of the challenge of handing on her faith in ways that mirror the best of her own religious upbringing while reflecting the ways in which her faith has matured and widened in adulthood.

As I mentioned in my recent posts, it is sometimes unclear to me how to share my faith with my children as a Progressive Christian. If that sounds odd or wishy-washy, perhaps reference my first post and it may come into better focus. On the whole, my guiding principle on this is that acting with indecision is better than not acting at all; saying something confusing is better than avoiding the subject. There is no holding pattern in talking to children about faith; they will observe your silence, and while there won’t be any judgment on their part, they will likely continue to treat it as a topic not to be discussed. If this is a comfortable place for you, then by all means do this (however, you may find it superfluous to read further!). The point is that this is not a comfortable place for me in the context of our family, and so there are some practices I have implemented into our life to keep the door open for conversations about faith. In the same way that we teach our children to sleep in their own beds from this time to that, to use a fork and spoon, and to wear clothes when entering public spaces, my husband and I have made the decision to share our culture of faith with our children as well.

For us, a large part of this is through attendance at our church. It is a Disciples of Christ congregation, and is on the small side so that we have gotten to know nearly everyone in it on a pretty familiar level. It is open and affirming, so that when we tell our children that God loves everyone, they can connect this with all the people they see, not just in our church but everywhere. When they see families of different gender or racial make-ups than our own, they can still recognize these people as sisters and brothers, as children of God. This is very important to us, and unfortunately given the cultural landscape means that there are not as many children at our church with whom they can fellowship. This is a risk we decided to take, a concession we decided to make to attend a church we can fully support in its theology and mission. Our church also engages regularly in care for the poor, both on a bi-monthly basis providing dinner for Tempe’s homeless program (I-HELP) and also, because I work in the church office, every workday as I give bag lunches to homeless or food-insecure neighbors who come in. My younger daughter comes to work with me, and although she sleeps a significant part of my shift (thankfully), she will often favor patrons with a smile, and my older daughter has been participating in both I-HELP and preparing and distributing lunch bags for a couple years now. Again, this was a decision we made with our children in mind, so that when they see people asking for money on the corner, they will know that those folks, too, are children of God and that we love them with our words and our deeds.

Apart from church, we have a few devotional practices as part of our family culture. When we lived in Cambridge, MA I worked at a store called Ten Thousand Villages, where I bought a handmade pottery bowl with the word “blessing” etched on it in different languages. We have used that bowl for many practices over the years, but the way we currently use it is this: I have written spiritual practices on seven small pieces of paper, one of which my older daughter chooses each day. Because she is four, she doesn’t know they are spiritual practices; I just say “Time to pick a paper!” and hold out the bowl. And, being four, she is, generally, happy to oblige. The seven practices are:

Call a far-away friend or family member,
Say a prayer for a loved one,
Sing a song of praise to God,
What are five things we are grateful for?
Post a funny or sweet picture on our family Facebook group,
Send a kind letter to someone, and
Send an encouraging text message.

As you can probably guess, these are designed to accomplish a couple of purposes; they also keep friends and family in the forefront of our minds and give us opportunities to practice kindness in different ways. In addition to choosing and doing one of these, we also have two children’s books, one of Bible stories, and one of Psalms, one of which we will read a story from depending on how much time we have. We also have a monthly verse we read each day, as well as a list of birthdays so we can celebrate with loved ones on their special days. We do blessings before meals, which at this point generally consists of my older daughter singing “Lord Jesus, thank you for this day, and thank you for food. Amen.” Sometimes it’s chirpy and fast, sometimes it’s slow and chant-like, and sometimes it’s to the tune of songs from Moana or Frozen. But she does it, and she knows it’s important. We also do informal bedtime prayers, remembering our day and looking forward to the next.

Another thing I’ve realized is that, even without these sorts of practices, if my faith is important to me, my children will know and interact with that. It has definitely become a two-way street in terms of conversations we have, particularly as our 4-year old has reached the stage of endless question-asking. Any simple inquiry about the world--nature, people, animals, for example--can be an occasion for us to talk about God and wonder together. It has been especially rewarding to see her perspective on things and hear her ideas about how the world works, and I know this will only increase as she gets older as long as the lines of communication are left open. I look forward to pondering my own faith more in light of her observations and curiosities.

So those are ways I have found to embed faith into the culture of our family, and at 4 years old and 18 months old, they seem to be sufficient. But as they grow, and as my husband and I grow, I know we will continue to trust the Spirit to lead us in being mindful and receptive to God and to be willing to do the work of Christ.

A few of our favorite, most-used books:
Psalms for Young Children, Marie-Hélène Delval
Whoever You Are, Mem Fox
The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones
Children of God Storybook Bible, Desmond Tutu
God’s Dream, Desmond Tutu

Hand to Hand, Mother to Daughter: Part 2 (Guest Post)

10/25/2017

Keeley Bruner

Keeley Bruner is the mother of two daughters and a devoted, progressive member of the Disciples of Christ Church. In this three-part series, she writes of the challenge of handing on her faith in ways that mirror the best of her own religious upbringing while reflecting the ways in which her faith has matured and widened in adulthood.

In my last post, I talked about my position as an Evangelical-turned-Progressive Christian and how that helps to inform my thought process concerning conversations of faith with my daughters, currently 4 years, and 18 months old. Rather than jumping directly into what it is my husband and I do as devotional practices, I thought it might be useful to shed a little light on our motivation for doing them. I can sympathize strongly with people who desire for their children to come to their own understanding of spirituality, and so refuse to try and steer them in one direction or another, so as to avoid religious compulsion. Yet, I know that I appreciated the work my parents did in introducing me to the basics of Christian faith from a young age, and appreciate having the foundation of understanding which led me through the years before I was able to make an informed decision about my own beliefs.

In thinking about this, I am reminded of a class my husband and I attended a few years ago on Positive Discipline. For the uninitiated, this is a method of child-rearing that eschews punitive or reward measures for controlling behavior, preferring instead to cultivate a relationship of respect and understanding, along with developmentally-appropriate expectations, to achieve harmony in the home. That is neither here nor there necessarily, but I remember the first activity we did in the initial class of the series, which was to envision the sort of person we hoped our child would be at age 18, or 21, say, whenever they were an adult. Many of us shared answers like “independent,” “competent,” “creative,” “loving,” “self-reliant,” “kind,” and so on. From there, the teacher asked what sorts of things we could be doing now to facilitate the growth of those characteristics in our child(ren). If that baffles you to think about, you aren’t alone; fortunately the next 3 sessions were devoted to exactly that, and there are plenty of books around if this has piqued your curiosity. Although we aren’t talking about Positive Discipline in this particular conversation, I would like to submit that when it comes to guiding your children in a life of faith, a similar exercise is beneficial. What kind of person do you hope your child will be as an adult, in relationship to God and, more generally, matters of faith?

This is especially pertinent in light of statistics about the decreasing rates of church attendance in recent years, but I’m not someone who thinks those statistics tell the whole story. I know it’s possible to be a thoughtful, fulfilled Christian individual without attending church. However, it’s true that I would prefer my children grow up to be people who are able to find communities of faith, where they feel at home worshipping with others. I would also love for my children to honor and respect the Bible, revering it as something deeply true, if not necessarily factual. I would love for them to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and to believe they were made by a God who loves them and desires their welfare. I wish for them to know, without a doubt, that they aren’t perfect but that no one asks them to be. I hope they will come to know that a life of love and respect for the person of Christ can lead to salvation from many things, not the least of which are despair, hopelessness, impotent rage, and oppressive greed. That’s not to say they will never experience these things, but I hope that these do not become a way of life, rather that they are led by the Holy Spirit into ways of peace, love, joy, wisdom, strength, and sufficiency. I desire for them to have the flexibility to question while also having strong familiarity with Christian tradition as it has been expressed across time and place. I would love them to be people who, like God, love deeply and broadly, showing kindness and fighting for the oppressed in whatever capacities they feel called, and who share generously of their resources to those less fortunate. In short, I would like to do whatever I can as a parent to help my children learn to love God and to love their neighbors, in the example of and according to the teaching of Jesus.

Although for many it may go without saying, there are a couple of essential things to do on our end, before we ever worry about actively imparting anything about faith to our children. First would be to pray for them. I have been more faithful about doing this in certain seasons of my life than others, but I have always been grateful for God’s guidance through this practice. Whether specific concerns about my daughters have been teething or sleeplessness, or troubles with friends or other adjustments that come with age, I trust that God will give me the wisdom and strength I need to love them in ways that resonate with them. In addition, it follows that our children will be more likely to be the people we hope they will become if we are striving to be role models in our own lives. Realizing that my husband and I are not perfect people, we still try to keep in mind that we are being watched, whether in regard to faith or anything else. If we want our children to be people who love unconditionally and show grace, there can be no doubt that they experience that regularly in their own home. If we want them to be grateful for and generous with their resources, they need to see us doing this in ways large and small. Prayer and modeling are perhaps the most basic, but often the most challenging aspects of raising our children in faith. But presuming we would like to draw them in more intentionally in the ways of spirituality, what are some ways to do that?

Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts: One Mom's Comparison

10/17/2017

The CEO of the Arizona Cactus-Pine Girl Scout Council, Tamara Woodbury, shared the following letter this evening with all the troop leaders, family members, and friends of Girl Scouts in our council regarding the move announced by Boy Scouts last week to include girl members in its ranks.

October 17, 2017

Dear Girl Scout Friends and Families,

Last week, the Boy Scouts announced they will begin accepting girls into their programs in 2018. The announcement has created a lot of media buzz and a multitude of conflicting opinions on this development. The biggest question, however, is how will this impact Girl Scouts.

Certainly, the Boy Scouts become another activity choice for girls and their families, adding to the Boys and Girls Clubs, 4-H, sports teams and more.

The Boy Scouts are framing their move around families and the convenience of taking their sons and daughters to the same activity. Some girls may want to join Boy Scouts because they think Boy Scouts do more, especially outdoor adventures. Yet, according to a recent Time magazine article, "There's actually a great deal of overlap among the different badge skills, including camping, car maintenance, first aid, fitness, budgeting and even robotics." Both organizations offer strong STEM programs and each offer a high award - the Gold Award for girls and the Eagle Scout rank for boys. Some girls are drawn to the Eagle Scout rank because it's better known and seemingly more prestigious. While it may be better known, the Gold Award is actually more challenging to earn since it requires making a measurable, sustainable impact.

Yes, Girl Scouting is different. Very different. Our program is all about girls, informed by research on how best to empower girls to lead, thrive and gain skills, beginning in kindergarten. We give girls the safe space of an all-girl environment, where they are free from the gender stereotypes entrenched in our society. Girls gain confidence and build grit and leadership qualities through experiences that are girl-led and designed to encourage learning-by-doing and cooperative learning.

Girls face unique challenges and they need support from the very beginning to build the resilience and confidence to overcome peer and media pressure. The Girl Scout program is designed and proven to change these sad statistics for girls.

Beginning around 6 years old, girls start thinking that boys are smarter than they are.
In elementary school, girls are as excited about math and science as boys, but lose interest by middle school.
One out of three girls say they are afraid to lead because of what others might think of them.

A report published this past summer by the Girl Scout Research Institute, The Girl Scout Impact Study, shows that participating in Girl Scouts helps girls develop key leadership skills they need to be successful in life. Compared to their peers, Girl Scouts are more likely than non-Girl Scouts to be leaders because they:

Have confidence in themselves and their abilities (80 % vs. 68 %)
Act ethically and responsibly, with concern for others
(75 % vs. 59 %)
Seek challenges and learn from setbacks (62 % vs. 42 %)
Develop and maintain healthy relationships (60 % vs. 43 %)
Exhibit community problem solving skills (57 % vs. 28 %)
Take an active role in decision making (80 % vs. 51 %)

In short, Girl Scouting works. As CEO of this council for more than 20 years, I have seen the impact our program makes in the lives of girls.

I continue to strongly believe that Girl Scouts is THE best leadership program for girls. We know the unique needs of girls and the work required to overcome the gender bias and gender gaps that exist in every facet of business and society.

Please share your Girl Scout stories and how you've seen Girl Scouts build girls into confident leaders. Thank you for all you do, each and every day, to help make the world a better place.

With love,

Tamara Woodbury

Some folks in Girl Scouts may feel threatened by this move. I, as a troop leader, find it curious and interesting, rather than threatening. As a troop leader, I have a special view into just how much Girl Scouts offers girls. I am beyond thrilled that I get to journey with my girls through this leadership program. I am interested to see what Boy Scouts will offer girls; what they will offer very much remains to be seen.

What I know as a troop leader is that my daughters have more opportunities than they could possibly take advantage of in a given year to earn badges and gain confidence in their skills and in themselves. Girl Scouts offers girls every opportunity I've ever heard of Boy Scouts offering boys--and then some.

On a personal note: I have lived the consequences of a male-dominated society my entire life. I was told as a girl and as a woman that I could never be a priest because Jesus, the male man-God, wouldn't have wanted it. I've been told countless times in countless ways to defer to the authority of males--in church, in the academy, in my career path, in virtually every aspect of my life. I've been taught to be silent in the face of male harrassment, abuse, and assault, lest I bring shame or humiliation unto myself. I've been boxed in to "feminine" stereotypes and roles again and again and again. But in Girl Scouts, girls aren't told what they can and can't be. We don't tell them, explicitly or implicitly, that their voices matter less than those of their male counterparts. We lift girls up to be whoever and whatever they want to be. Every time I lead a Scout meeting, every time I go to a Troop Leader meeting, I catch myself looking around in awe at the talent and interest and curiosity and leadership in the girls and women I see, uninterrupted by the casual sense of superiority/privilege that boys and men so often bring.

I think it's great that Boy Scouts are going to accept girls--because maybe those boys will figure out that girls can do anything they can do (and just as well, if not better).

As for Girl Scouts: if the Boy Scouts come up with a great idea, girls will examine it and make it even better for themselves, without asking for some boy or man's permission. Because we we are G.I.R.L. Scouts: Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, Leaders.

Hand to Hand, Mother to Daughter: Part 1 (Guest Post)

10/7/2017

Keeley Bruner

Keeley Bruner is the mother of two daughters and a devoted, progressive member of the Disciples of Christ Church. In this three-part series, she writes of the challenge of handing on her faith in ways that mirror the best of her own religious upbringing while reflecting the ways in which her faith has matured and widened in adulthood.

Growing up in my home, faith was always a part of my life. It was woven into the fabric of our family through weekly worship services and prayer meetings, blessings before meals, bedtime stories and prayers, and frequent conversations with family members. As I got older, my involvement in church activities increased, and my own understanding of my faith and what was framed as my personal relationship with Jesus Christ grew. I remained cozy in evangelical Christianity throughout my college years, continuing to attend church, engage in daily personal Bible study and prayer, and serve through my college’s Campus Crusade for Christ ministry.

Whenever someone begins a spiritual autobiography this way, the implication is often that something then happened, that some shift occurred to change the trajectory of the expected path. And while these things did happen, I can’t trace it to a single event or even period of time. Maybe it was meeting my husband the summer before my senior year in college, a deeply intelligent and thoughtful man whose own faith had undergone significant dissembling and reassembling in the months before we met. Maybe it was traveling to Uzbekistan on a cultural exchange with my college ministry buddies and experiencing the love and hospitality of people of different, or no faith, there. Maybe it was moving to Cambridge, MA after getting married right out of college, where we experienced a definite cultural shift from our suburban Bible-Belt environment. Maybe it was hanging out with Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and other Catholics at my husband’s graduate school there, or experiencing the social activism of our Baptist church home in Cambridge. Maybe it was moving to Princeton, NJ and finding our spiritual home at a United Church of Christ congregation in the middle of that small, idyllic town, and witnessing the fire of older saints’ faith which had been forged through decades of practicing progressive Christianity. Maybe it was Obama, and the way he engaged people of all faiths to see the possibility and necessity of using government to care for the least of these. Maybe it was the work of Jim Wallis, of reading issue after issue of Sojourners and seeing the ways that Christians are jumping in and doing the real work of caring for the poor without keeping cost, without needing numbers and conversions to bolster their faith. Maybe it was experiencing pregnancy and giving birth, and realizing the magic of growing a person inside my body and nourishing a baby with my own milk, with my own life, twice. Maybe it was moving to Tempe, AZ and being pulled as if with a magnet to our faith community here, the most ragtag, loving, beautiful bunch of misfits I ever saw, with our hearts open wide to whatever, and whomever, may come through our doors.

It’s possible that the shift had something to do with the guilt of never doing enough in my previous Christian tradition, of always falling short but never fully being able to count on God to still love me or the grace of Jesus to fill the gap between who I was and who I should be. It’s possible it had to do with the bean-counting I found here and there, of how many testimonies shared and how many souls converted when the work of Christ encompassed so much more in my mind. It’s possible it had to do with the boiling down of the broad, deep, wide, incomprehensibly beautiful work of the Spirit into 4 sentences, each illustrated by pertinent cartoons. And most recently, it’s possible the final shift slipped into place with the realization that 82% of my former cohorts used their rights, and privilege, to catapult the coarse, vulgar, greedy celebrity we know as the leader of our land into power.

The fact is that it’s done, that the trajectory has been different than it might have been. While I have faith in God, love for Christ, and a kinship with the Spirit that are true, deep, and meaningful to me on a daily basis, how these are manifested departs significantly from what I might have expected based on my early life. But as I expressed above, I like to think of that conversion as a moving towards something, rather than away from something. I think of it as embracing a much larger God than I had imagined, with a much more expansive love than I had been told and a closer knowledge and presence with us than I had ever envisioned.

While my faith surely remains simply a part of my identity, another reason it matters at this point in my life is my children. Having come from where I did (mark my husband’s beginning at roughly the same place on the spectrum) and having traveled to where I am now (repeat), how do I foster a life of faith in my family in a thoughtful, genuine way? The church we attend has a small and hardy children’s ministry but, as my own mother decided, I don’t want to depend on that alone to impart the beauty of Christian faith to my daughters. I may not want them to grow up in the cradle of Evangelicalism the way I did, but there are many facets of my upbringing I certainly wish to convey to them. So, what is a Progressive Christian to do?

Liturgical Renewal

7/9/2017

It's been 2.5 years since I gave birth to my Thean ministry, and in that time I've been imagining into life a liturgy that is uniquely Thean but which also honors the many religious traditions in which I have learned and grown. Today, the shape of this liturgy reached maturity.

One of my difficulties with the liturgical format I grew up with is that it constricted the agency of the majority of the participants. When during college I came across liturgy that honored the agency of all gathered while maintaining a coherent, holistic narrative ritual, my vision of what religion could be and the shape of my own faith changed. I went on to study liturgy for that reason, at both the Master's and Ph.D. levels. After moving from Cleveland, however, liturgical and religious agency was hard to come by in the same way. I recognized along the way that I was called to priesthood (which ultimately required me to turn from my religious upbringing, a tradition that claimed women could not legitimately be priests/ministers), but even after that departure (or perhaps because of it), my vision of priesthood wasn't the sort that would authorize me to make or enforce decisions on behalf of a community or to otherwise wrangle agency from others. Theanism, which was in its birthing my own act of radical religious agency, allowed for authority created to dwell not at the top of a hierarchy, but at the depths of diverse community.

In its new maturity, Thean liturgy creates intentional space for the creative agency of each one who takes part. It is not merely the fruit of my imagining as a Thean priestess. When it comes time for what would normally be the sermon/homily/drash, each participant is given sacred time and space to pursue the creative work of her deepest yearning. In her creative agency enacted, she becomes the great revelation of Thea.

There is time in this liturgy for what marks, to me, what is both familiar and holy--the lighting of candles, the breaking of bread, the sharing of the cup, the sounding of bells, the anointing with oil--but now the climax of Thean liturgy is the creative act that finds its origins in the deepest desires of each person. It is during this time that Thea feels most alive, in us, in myself, in one another. It is sacred communion, the night of bliss, the rosy-fingered dawn of awakening.

And as I watch my daughters continue their creative work, now hours after our new liturgy has concluded, I perceive the nod within myself that this liturgy is the holy, whole-making ritualizing I've been chasing since I left my liturgical home in Cleveland. This is the liturgy that reflects the religious agency I learned long ago from a community that lived that agency, and which was eventually excommunicated by the local hierarch for exercising that agency.

May my daughters and I ever practice and hold space for that agency in one another, and in practicing this learn to hold space for that agency in others.

Stepping beyond the bounds of comfort

7/1/2017

Tonight I hosted Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace as I do every first Saturday of the month, and tonight two dear women in my life took part in it for the first time.

As I settled into the presence of each woman gathered there, various occasions of stepping outside my comfort zone surfaced in my memory. When I first arrived in Phoenix nearly four years ago, I knew almost no one, and I knew that if I wanted to get to know new people, I'd have to be in charge of making those connections happen--those relationships wouldn't manifest without my initiative. So I did research, I stepped out, and I introduced myself to people I'd never met.

To be vulnerable in a new setting has long been hard for me. Experiencing that vulnerability was rarely worth it when I was younger, but these days I do it despite sometimes intense discomfort, because what I seek lies on the other side of that discomfort: trust, new insight, and connection.

Each new encounter, each new experience, is an opportunity for synchronicity, an opportunity to meet myself in a new way, to come face to face with the deepest yearnings of my heart. Even when I hit an apparent wall, encountering someone or something that repels me, I can see myself in that as well--my shadow side, the side that is hard to accept, the side that is easier to brush under a rug and be done with.

As I sat in this beautiful, open-hearted gathering of women this evening, I sensed the risk involved for each person there, including myself. I hold this space for others that they may be given life from it, but some part of me whispers in my ear, "If no one shows, you've failed." And that is the struggle so many leaders of faith communities face--the idea that numbers determine success in ministry. In reality, "success" is ancillary. What is central is presence--in my case, a willingness to be present to and with other women, whether or not they seek or accept that offering.

Tonight I found myself grateful once again that my livelihood is not determined by the "success" of my ministry--that my dayjob affords me the opportunity to pursue my ministry without requiring anything from those to whom I minister. As a woman inclined toward faith and spirituality, I have often felt pressure to offer something to the communities in which I have been spiritually fed, which has more than once left me depleted. What a gift to be able to offer ministry to others in which I require absolutely nothing back. And, by my not needing anything from those to whom I minister, perhaps those who take part are able to focus inward (on what they seek) instead of outward (on what others think or need), and in doing so are able to discover that what they seek dwells within them, and also dwells within each person gathered.

For who is Thea but the fire inside you and me? Who is Thea but our very breath, the light in our eyes, the dance in out feet, the poetry of our hearts? Who is Thea but the community that binds us, the beauty that delights us, the music that sustains us, and the love that heals us?

Who is she indeed, the one to whom we pray, if not the one we behold in the mirror, and the many we behold in the world?

I am grateful for the women who show up for this gathering, those who show up only once and those who show up almost every month and those who are there now and again. I am grateful for the unfettered gift of their presence to me, for in it they are living icons of Thea. They remind me of who I really am and also of how much love and thoughtfulness and wisdom the Creation is capable of. In their vulnerability and openness, I encounter Thea. In my leadership and ministry, I encounter Thea. In our journeying together, I encounter Thea. And in all of that, my heart is made full, ready to face the shadow side, to pull up the corner of the rug lovingly and to deal bit by bit with all I and the world have stowed there--because if a dance is going to take place, that rug needs to be rolled all the way up!

We shall each get to where we are going, I believe, one wobbly, risky, uncertain step at a time, until we've mastered Thea's wild, loving dance. And what a gathering that will be!

How does it feel?

6/10/2017

I shared the ordo of my Strawberry Moon Thean Eucharist at a friend's request, and he asked me afterward how it felt during and after that liturgy.

For a bit of background, allow me to say that my Thean Eucharist has evolved a great deal over the last two and a half years, so much so that we stopped doing Eucharist for a while because my thealogy had changed so much from its Christian roots.

But this was the response I offered my friend, and I believe it sums up what I value most about Theanism:

Our only light was what remained outside (which wasn't much) and the lone candle that we lit. The lighting of the candle hushed them. Nearly everything I did from that point forward brought forth a torrent of questions, mostly from A. M couldn't participate as well as A could with the parts involving reading. Both of those things left me with a little frustration. That being said, I felt this extraordinary calm and joy as we moved through the liturgy. It was so familiar and yet so fresh. It felt a bit like being at a wedding, or a funeral, or a baptism--it was rich with meaning and charged with the shaping of identity. It felt important and weighty, and I felt alive and at home right where I was, doing what I was doing, sharing and helping shape the story of me and my girls with them. It was as poignant as any liturgy at my old parish back home, and even more poignant than Thean Evening Prayer has been. Perhaps that was the case because my daughters were at the center of it and I could see them, or at least A, making connections and sorting out what it means to be of Thea and to regard all the rest of the world, including those we find difficult to love, as part of Thea.

Making connections between the narrative one hears and one's role in it, and to tell a narrative that empowers a person to shine in ways she never realized she could, is what it's all about for me. To be able to do this with others--particularly my own daughters--to observe them making those connections, and to watch them practice their unique power by being agents in the liturgy we share, is about as near to ecstasy as I've come.

The practice of engaging in liturgy with my girls feels like one of the most important tasks I could ever undertake, because this liturgy as I've shaped it encompasses what I value (and want to pass on to them) most. I want them to break bread with others. I want them to pray, whether that prayer centers them or gives them something to argue with, or both. I want them to be confident storytellers, and I want them to know they have the right to shape the stories they tell. I want them to know the extraordinary relationship between light and shadow without glorifying one over the other. I want them to know that they are, as much as any other part or person of the world, of Thea, of the stars, of the glory of this beautiful universe.

I loved it. ♥

When light and shadow unite

5/6/2017

This evening I arrived early at Pathways of Grace to set up for Thean Evening Prayer, and I found a complimentary copy of Kissed by God - Holy Women Create! by Shirley Cunningham waiting for me. I flipped through it, sipping images and sampling stories of biblical and spiritual female leaders from the Jewish and Christian worlds. A short piece of mine was included at the very end of the book about the woman at the well who encountered the Christ. My breath caught as I read it.

I wait, preparing to make my hasty retreat, wondering if my bucket can help me fend him off if he tries to attack me. He doesn’t move. He continues to look at my face, as if I am the living well and he is refreshing his parched lips and mouth with the story of my life. He takes time, setting aside his ego to make space for my story—and then he tells it to me as he has perceived it.

This--the experience of having another take the time to absorb my story with openhearted love and non-judgment--this is the moment when light and shadow unite. And this is the moment of ecstasy, of knowing that I am beloved, exactly as I am.

I considered this as I led prayer this evening. When I was Christian, in recognizing that I was the beloved, I understood myself as being in an ongoing process of becoming united to the source of my longing and fulfillment, to the Holy One.

As a Thean, I reocognize that I have always been united to the Holy One--not because of baptism, not because of belief, but because I am of her. What a strange and surprising thing it is, to spend one's life seeking what one yearns for, only to discover that what one yearns for has been within oneself all along.

It took thirty-three years for me to realize that my pining was not for the one just beyond my reach, who complemented me but was decidedly not me. My pining turned out to be for the one I beheld in the mirror, the one whose hands and feet and eyes and voice were the instruments of my muse, my author, myself. I am united to Thea, not because I was ever separate from her and then did what was required to become one with her, but because I am her handiwork, and my flesh is her flesh.

Tonight I prayed the psalms and was reminded that Thea's body is nothing more or less than creation. I am the one I seek, and the one I seek is likewise in every other creature I will ever meet--in my beloved husband, in my darling children, in my despised enemy, in the cascading waterfall, in the unmoved mountain, in the cocooned caterpillar. To recognize Thea in myself is to recognize her in all the world, and that is reason for pause. If I trust that my light and shadow are beloved, then it follows that the light and shadow of all beings, animate and inanimate, are also beloved.

What a challenge that is to accept. And what a wonder. It's so easy in daily life to give in to the temptation to dismiss others--and yet those others are made of the same sacred starstuff I am.

And so I wondered, long after I was left alone at Pathways of Grace this evening, what it would take to love others in the way I've learned to love myself, my beautiful, broken, vivacious, imperfect, holy self. And I wondered if perhaps I'm still clinging to the idea of a holy other whose job it is to be available to the one whose yearning runs deep, when all I need to do is look in the mirror to see where love begins and ends.

Meeting Thea in Death

4/27/2017

My daughters faced a great and difficult milestone today: they faced the death of their first pet.

Technically, she was my oldest daughter's first pet. She was a betta (a trans-betta, if you wish; although she was among the male bettas at the pet store, my daughter quickly informed us that her new fish had told her she was a girl, and her name was Princess Amanda). She was gorgeous, too, all shimmer and irridescence in her royal blues, green, and violets. She was also spunky, zooming around her new fish bowl, which was, among other things, a one-eyed pink monster with bat wings and fangs.

My older daughter was vigilant in feeding and caring for Princess Amanda, especially after we warned her not to over-feed her. When our younger daughter, attempting to be helpful late last week, fed Princess Amanda a handful of betta food pellets, my hubby ended up scooping out over a dozen of them, and he and I both knew immediately that Princess Amanda might not make it.

It took several days, and we wondered at moments if maybe she would pull through. But she stopped eating, and only moved around to break the surface now and then for a bubble of air.

When we got home today, I found her unmoving at the bottom of her fish bowl. She was lying sideways. That's the moment I knew. I told my hubby, but neither of us was ready to tell our daughtrs. I waited till he had departed for an evening engagement. I fed them mac and cheese, and I waited. When they were done eating, I told them Princess Amanda had died, looking directly at my eldest as I said it. Shock, then grief, clouded her face. She got up to look at her fish. She had to see for herself; how could she take my word for it?

The next few minutes were minutes filled with tears and sadness and anguish, for both my daughters. I walked with them to the couch, and I held them close to me as they sobbed. I felt their grief and held it close, sharing their bitter cup.

Then I invited them to honor Princess Amanda by burying her in the earth. We moved her from her fish bowl to a smaller bowl, one that my oldest daughter would be able to carry with ease. We dug a shallow hole in the earth on the perimeter of our back deck. My oldest carried Princess Amanda; my youngest carried seeds that she and her sister had chosen. I carried fertile soil. Anastasia poured Princess Amanda and the water that surrounded her onto the earth she had chosen. Then she and her sister poured soil over her, telling her as they offered the soil what they loved about her. Then my girls scattered tiny carrot and tomato seeds over her, and I added a tiny layer of soil over the seeds to protect them with dark, nourishing moisture. And then my oldest daughter placed one of her prized rocks on top of the burial mound we had created. As all this took place, we talked about the circle of life, of being born, of dying, and of new life emerging from death. We talked about Princess Amanda's life, and how her body would become part of the nourishing soil that would help our seeds grow.

After the burial had concluded and some minutes had passed, I offered my Thea necklace to my oldest to wear as a comfort. She offered it to her sister a few minutes later, who's wearing it now for that same purpose.

Thea is the one who envelops my family with understanding and tears in this shadowy quiet. She is the one who is mourned as my daughters and I mourn the one we love, and she's the one we anticipate as new life emerges from what we have planted.

Blessed be the one we loved, we love, and we will forever love. ♥

Good vs. Bad

2/7/2017

I took part in my first local Christian Sunday liturgy for the first time in two years this past Sunday. I walked in late to the early liturgy at the little church on my way to downtown Phoenix, the homily already underway.

The preacher was in the middle of speaking about the difference between good liturgy and bad liturgy. Bad liturgy, he said, was the sort of liturgy we do--actions and intentions all woven together--for our own ends, so that we may personally benefit from it in the ways we see fit. Good liturgy, on the other hand, is the sort of liturgy we do for God's sake, for God's ends. I saw where he was going, especially from a political standpoint, because it seems that in this country, at this moment in history, far too much is being done for self-aggrandizing, self-benefiting ends, while the ends that matter from a certain Christian perspective--clothing the naked and feeding the hungry--go unnoticed, even though these are, from this perspective, God's ends.

What I noticed as this preacher went on was the absolute divide he made between God and human beings, God's ends and human ends. That divide is, perhaps, why Jesus, who is said to be both human and divine, is such a miracle. For me as a Thean, however, I cannot thealogically claim such a definitive divide between God and what she has made.

As I encounter her, Thea is an author. As I encounter myself and others, we are and are becoming are her evolving masterwork. Thea is not done with her masterwork, it seems to me, and even if she were, her work would be no less part of her. She may be distinct in some sense from her work, but her work is of her, and she of it.

I say this because of my own experience just today as I picked up my first novel, Memory Stands Still, and marveled as I read it. My novel, my words, my stories, are of me. Writing this and other stories has changed and revealed me. One could claim on some level a divide between me and my art, but I would argue--and so would many around me--that my art, like my dreams, reveal the deepest parts of myself. One may talk of Thea, God, apart from her masterwork, but what would one say of her?

One might answer that one would say nothing, and that that would be the best way to honor Thea, who is ineffable. And that would also be correct.

The grace and beauty of Thea is that there are many ways to behold her, to perceive her, to encounter her. As a Thean, I encounter God incarnate in every person, every creature, I meet--every one, without exception. For me, Thea is revealed not as absolute other, but as author of and the very stuff of creation. Thea's masterwork is Thea herself. The radical thing about Theanism is that there is no encounter one can have that is not encounter with Thea. My ability to perceive her in the one who wounds me and wounds others may be limited, but she is present and enfleshed in the meanest and kindest of all of us, in the messy complexity of every one of us, including myself. That is what makes the radical divide between good and bad too facile; it implies that God can be here and not there, and the truth, at least of my experience, is that God is in and of all of it. We the universe are Thea figuring herself out, and singing beauty--in all its difficulty and breathtaking loveliness, into life. We who are Thea are both good and bad, and Thea's intentions, Thea's ends, are very much our own, and ours hers. What this means is that Thea doesn't always get it right--we, you and I, don't always get it right. But we, her creation, her Sacred Body, her hands and feet, are moving, one must hope, in the direction of greater understanding, beauty, and love, for that is her, our, end.

In other words, I don't believe human ends are so very different from Thea's, despite the evils, hatred, and selfishness that run rampant in our world. What I do believe is that it's easy for every one of us to lose sight of what is most important and life-giving in our daily lives for the sake of accomplishing the goals we've chosen to set for ourselves. There is not one person in the world who has not done harm to another while attempting to do what they believe is good, right, or worthwhile. There is not one person in the world who has not engaged in what is selfish while wanting to help others or make a positive difference. Good and bad are woven together, and there is no unweaving them.

But this is not reason for hopelessness. It is reason for relief, I believe--relief in the ability to be honest, to assess ourselves and one another frankly and with tremendous compassion, to choose to hold together rather than attempting to tear apart what cannot be divided neatly into compartments. From my Thean perspective, there is no way to achieve "pure goodness," because there is no such thing. There is, rather, a journey for each of us, a journey with many possible directions, setbacks, and ecstasies. We each have steps of our own in the cosmic dance. We each have our harmony, our solo, our part in the symphony Thea composes and performs in this very moment.

What I would like to suggest is that perhaps, instead of pointing fingers at what or who is good or bad, that it is time to set aside our assumptions and judgments aside for a while and focus instead on what we live for: loving and drawing out the best in one another, starting with the one we see in the mirror. For we are worth our great efforts to love. We are Thea, and love is the masterwork we are, have been, and are becoming.

Trimming the Hearth, Setting the Table

12/4/2016

Today marks the second week of Advent on the western Christian calendar. One of my favorite four-part Advent hymns, which I first encountered during my time in theology school at Collegeville, was "People, Look East" by Eleanor Farjeon:

People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.

Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.

Angels, announce with shouts of mirth
Christ who brings new life to earth.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Lord, is on the way.

As a Roman Catholic growing up, my experience was that hymns were kept to a strict three verses, or two if the nave wasn't long enough to make a generous procession. As a theology student preparing liturgy, however, my fellow liturgy students and liturgical music instructors and eventually I harped (so to speak) on the importance of singing a hymn from start to finish. Even though young ones might fidget and knees might be ache, a hymn deserved its full run. One wouldn't recite several verses of a poem and leave out the rest at a poetry reading, after all.

This hymn in particularly strikes me, because apart from the final verse, it is not explicitly Christian. Metaphors give color and texture to the mystery that is revealed in the final verse: the Christ, the Savior, the Light of the World, is on the way. How hopeful that is. And our job?

Trim the hearth and set the table.

I always remember this line as "sweep the hearth and set the table," because the sweeping is as integral and exciting as the trimming--one wouldn't normally trim a space without first clearing, organizing, and putting away the old to make way for what is coming.

I've thought of this hymn often in the last several months, particularly as I have prepared sacred space for my women's circle. We pray Thean Evening Prayer together and follow it with yummy food and conversation, and my preparation for this time together is diligent. I want every piece of it to be ready. Not perfect--perfection is not necessarily a virtue to my mind--but ready, which is to say thoughtfully, fully, and thealogically prepared. My role is to make sure that the hearth is trimmed and the table set. I am to ready the way for the guest, the rose, the bird, the star. The women I meet are each of these; the women I meet are the incarnate presence of Thea.

My circle met yesterday evening, and on my journey home I cried tears of gratitude and sang a new song:

For Rhonda
For Kelly
For Jessica
For Melani

Thank you, O Thea,
for these, your Icons:
for blessing me with your Presence

Over and over I sang my gratitude. I considered adding my own name, in honor of my own identity as Theatokos, but I did not. My gratitude was all for these women who did what I am incapable of doing alone: rendering my burgeoning, solitary Thean faith communal.

"People, Look East" invites those who sing it to do the same: to prepare for the unarrived to arrive. Folding one's arms and shutting the door with firm resolve might be simpler and require less effort, but Advent invites us to prepare for something and someone new, something and someone of genuine and ultimate concern. What and whom do we await? And how will that one manifest? Are we ready for the visitor who will arrive at last, changing us as we gather in circles of love, revealing the presence of the Holy in all its imperfect, unexpected, wonderful glory?

Shared Leadership

10/24/2016

Painting by Amanda Petersen

This weekend I had the opportunity to share leadership with a number of deeply spiritual, curious, wise people--all of whom happened to be women. Pathways of Grace in Phoenix, founded and led by Amanda Petersen who is a UCC minister, was celebrating its tenth anniversary as a spiritual life center. Amanda invited me to lead Thean Evening Prayer to begin the celebratory weekend, which I gladly did.

Through the course of the weekend, as prayer, events, talks, workshops, meditation, and conversation took place, I got to know about a dozen women, nearly all of whom are leaders within their respective spiritual contexts. We represented UCC, Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopalian, Thean, Buddhist, and Pagan faith traditions, and we listened to one another and talked lovingly with one another about how those traditions shaped us, and how we in our own ways shaped and reshaped them. The tone of the weekend was neither hierarchical nor dogmatic. We were many spiritual journeyers sharing leadership that we might learn from one another while journeying side by side.

I spoke with a dear friend about it afterward, and one of the comments she made was that she forgot that Arizona is a relatively conservative place overall, religiously/spiritually speaking. That is part of what makes Pathways so special, especially to me. It is a safe haven for exploring what is often forbidden (anathema sit) or frowned upon by mainstream religion. It is a place where, for example, prayer to the Divine Feminine can happen in the feminine voice, without critical, dismissive, or glaring glances from others in the room. It is a place where, for example, women can speak up and out freely without being talked over by male clergy (or men in general). It is a place where every person's voice and body and experience is recognized as a bearer of deep wisdom and limitless value--not just those of male persons.

I laugh a little, remembering that my spiritual director, a female Episcopalian deacon, began recommending that I attend workshops at Pathways a year and a half before I finally decided to set foot there. As it turns out, I probably wouldn't have been ready to accept the graces of Pathways when my spiritual director first mentioned it to me. I am ready now, however, and I find myself filled with gratitude for this oasis in the desert.

This weekend I sensed the stirrings of new life preparing to burst forth, not only in the individual experiences of me and the others who took part, but in our shared experience of giving birth to community this weekend. I believe that Pathways of Grace, and other small, welcoming-without-requirement spiritually oriented communities like it, are a model of what spiritual community will look like in the future. There will be options more than demands. There will be exploration more than assimilation. And those who choose spiritual practices and concepts will do so in freedom and love, not fear and guilt.

I look at Pathways of Grace, and I see a lovingly worn labyrinth with many twists and turns, all leading to the Divine one who is at the core of the universe, at the center of each of us.

Blessed be. ♥

Mystagogy - Thean Evening Prayer

9/4/2016

Last night was a turning point for me: for the first time, I brought my ministry as a Thean priestess out of the privacy of my family's house church and into the public realm, leading Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace in Phoenix.

My vision for Thean Evening Prayer was simple: it would be an intimate gathering for those who identify as women to pray together to God in their own (female) voices using feminine images for God and imagining God in relationship to Creation through a feminine, feminist lens.

When I arrived, my dear husband helped me arrange the space the way I wanted it, and then he departed so I could pray before others arrived. At 5:00, the time when prayer was set to begin, I was the only person in the room. I continued to pray, and as I prayed, I was surprised by the awareness that I actually wasn't alone--I was in the company of thousands of generations of women, women who had come before me, who had refused to be silenced or disempowered by oppressors, women who had imagined themselves and their God the way they chose, women who had loved, created, mentored and empowered girls and women within their influence. All their efforts, all their willingness to stand up for themselves, all their willingness to make a difference when they were told to shrink and be quiet--all of that energy had culminated in this moment, this hour, in which I was able to embrace my public ministry as a spiritual leader, a Thean priestess, a woman who wouldn't settle for the oppression that would seek to rein me in.

I knew going into the night that several women who wanted to pray with me were out of town. I knew also that several women who had wanted to pray with me had something come up at the last minute. I prepared to pray with my cloud of witnesses. I waited. Then a familiar face arrived, a woman who had prayed with me at our former Episcopal parish in Tempe, a woman who was preparing to lead her own spiritual circle for women. We hugged, we talked for a few minutes, I showed her around the rooms of Pathways of Grace, and eventually we settled into our seats to pray. I sounded the singing bowl four times. We stood, and I intoned a invitatory that I had learned years ago at my Roman Catholic parish in Cleveland, the same parish that ignited my love for liturgy: Let my prayer arise like incense in your sight, the lifting of my hands a sign of trust in you, O God. She joined with me in singing, and we sang it several times, letting the words soak into the space and ourselves.

We prayed the psalms next--Psalm 141, from which the invitatory came, and then a series of other psalms. Between each psalm there was a pregnant, full silence. At one point, I held my breath in between verses to keep my voice from breaking and tears from falling. Next time--next time I will let them break and fall.

At the conclusion of the psalms, we moved to the homily. I explained that in the Christian (and particularly Benedictine) tradition, Saturday night evening prayer was a big event, because it was the vigil for Sunday, the most important day of the Christian week. Saturday evening prayer was therefore when a homily was given, at least in communities that prayed together the liturgy of the hours every day. I noted that the homily would traditionally be given by the presider in top-down fashion, the presider imparting (his) reflections as seeds to be planted in the hearts of those around (him). Then I explained that in the case of Thean Evening Prayer, the homily was open to every person present, because a key Thean belief is that every (woman) has deep wisdom to share. So we shared the homily based on phrases from the psalms that had particularly resonated with us. Our homily was a mutual conversation in which we listened to one another and sounded/heard our own voices, recognizing that Thea's voice resounded through each of us.

I don't know how much time passed--time felt as though it was suspended, but I know from the content of the conversation that it must have taken a while. When the homily had reached an end, I turned to the next portion of evening prayer: the anointing. A bottle of oil stood on the little altar before us. I removed the glass stopper and poured a small portion of it into a glass bowl, inviting my praying partner to partake of it. I spoke of olive oil as an ancient healing balm, but I also spoke of it as the stuff with which royalty, priests, and prophets were anointed. To partake of scented oil is a sign not only of healing, but of empowerment and authority, specifically the power and authority to speak and act as one deems fit and wise. I said that it was particularly poignant to anoint the parts of ourselves for which we seek wise power and authority: the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the nose, the hands, the heart. My prayer partner and I dipped our fingers in the oil and rubbed the rose and clove scents into our skin, and then prayed Psalm 45 from the Thean Psalter, which included verses like, "You, a woman, are among the wise ones; grace flows from your lips," "Your leadership shall endure, for you love goodness and reject unkindness," and "Thea anoints you with the oil of gladness."

Thus empowered, we prayed together for those all around us, and lifted up personal prayers of our own. Then we stood and prayed a modified version of the Lord's Prayer called "Our Mother," written by Miriam Therese Winter of herchurch in San Francisco. We concluded with a collect prayer and this blessing:

May Thea bless us with courage,
guide us with her unrelenting love,
and empower us to answer her sacred call. Amen.

Our time together was not over--we stood, moved to the other side of the room, and talked over a small spread of food and bubbly water I had brought to share. We talked about our experiences, our faith, our friends, our leadership, our children, and our lives. We talked and talked until suddenly it was nearly 7:00--between the two of us and the cloud of witnesses that surrounded us, we had spent the two hours for which I had reserved the space.

I feel full: full of gratitude, full of joy, full of wisdom, full of holy power. This gathering was and wasn't about me. It was about me as a woman who has been on a journey all her life to arrive at the moment of taking up her life's vocation. It was about every woman who has ever done the same or sought to do the same. It was about every young girl who is figuring out who she wants to be, and it is about countless generations of women still to come who will change and lead this world for the better, overcoming oppressions and embracing who they see in the mirror as living icons of the Holy One.

For a free e-copy of the Thean Psalter, send me a note with your e-mail address. If you'd like a print copy, you can send $10 and your name and address via PayPal to me at lifeloveliturgy at gmail dot com. If you self-identify as a woman and would like to take part in future gatherings of Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace, we meet every first Saturday of the month at 5:00, and you can RSVP on the Pathways of Grace meetup.com page.

Praying with the Thean Book of Psalms

8/24/2016

This morning, my older daughter and I cleared our dining room table. I invited her to bring out my lidded white candle and my sparkling, pale purple quartz. "What are you doing?" she asked as I opened the lid of the candle. I said nothing, setting the lid next to the candle, placing the quartz chunk inside it, and lighting the candle with a match. I opened my Thean Psalter to the section marked "Twenty-fourth Day: Morning Prayer." I asked my daughter if she was ready, and she said yes. I proceeded to pray the appointed psalms, 116-118, in a lively, lilting voice, making eye contact with her and slowing my words at important phrases. At the end of the final psalm, I said, "Amen," and she repeated it after me. I invited her to blow out the candle, and we collapsed in giggles as she blew and blew at the flame, to no avail. Thean light is not easily extinguished, she discovered.

After I walked my older daughter to school and drove my husband to work, my younger daughter and I met with a friend of mine who's heading off for rabbinical studies this fall. She wanted a copy of the print version of the Thean Psalter. As soon as I gave it to her, she began adding thin plastic tabs to it; she also oohed and aahed over the purple cardstock title page, the color of which was her favorite. Her excitement as she explored the Psalter's words mirrored my own, and I couldn't help grinning as I watched her. She asked which of the psalms were my favorites, and I pointed out Psalm 23, which reimagines the relationship between G-d and psalmist, moving from shepherd/sheep to mutually curious, passionate lovers who are, among other things, equals.

This Psalter represents Thean thealogical thought, which is feminist and feminine, egalitarian, pacifist, and creation-centric. Patriarchal structures/images as well as themes of violence and vengeance are challenged, eliminated, or transformed.

The e-copy of this finalized Thean Psalter is available for free to all who request it. The hard copy, which is laser-printed on high quality white paper and purple cardstock and comb-bound with a black spine in clear plastic front and back covers, is available for $10USD, payable via PayPal, with free shipping anywhere in the continental United States. I plan to make hard copies of the Thean Psalter available each first Saturday of the month at Thean Evening Prayer, where all who identify as women are welcome to pray.

Psalm 139

7/29/2016

Psalm 139

Thea, you search me out and you know me;
   you know my sitting down and my rising up;
   you discern the pattern of my thoughts.

You trace my journeys and my resting-places
   and are acquainted with all my ways.

Indeed, there is not a word on my lips
   that you, O Thea, do not know.

You journey behind, before, and beside me,
   and you lay your hand upon me in blessing.

Where can I go then from your Ruach?
    where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb to the heavens, you are there;
   if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning
   and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me
   and your hands hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
   and the light around me turn to night,”

Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day;
   darkness and light to you are both alike.

For you yourself created my inmost parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made;
   all your works are wonders to behold.

My body was not hidden from you,
   while I was being made in secret
   and woven in the depths.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were already written in your book;
   they were fashioned day by day,
   when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O Thea!
   how great is the sum of them!

If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
   to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

Search me, O Thea, and know my heart;
   lead me in your wisdom’s way.